Research Area E investigates dependencies associated with gender, sexuality, status, class, ethnicity, religion, age and other historical, anthropological, and representational aspects relevant to explaining differences among persons and human groups, both in past and present societies. It examines how the dynamic and overlapping relationships between categorical markers of social difference and their associated normativities entangle themselves with broader social structures, which create, consolidate, strengthen, perpetuate or undermine social dependencies, often at the expense of the discrimination, undervaluation and invisibilization of other collectives and individuals throughout history.
Representative
Who works in this research area?
Prof. Dr. Marion Gymnich
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependencies ‘at Home’: Narratives of Domestic Service in British Literature and Non-fiction (1660-1900)
Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependency, Materiality and Gender in the longue durée: The Perspective from South America
Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner
Research Topic: Transformations of the Family and the Household in the Period 300–750 and how these are Reflected in Legal norms and Practices
Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski
Research Topic: Global and Gender History in the Early Modern Period History of Dependency and Slavery
Prof. Dr. Kristina Großmann
Research Topic: Dependency and Agency in Globalized Resource Extraction in Southeast Asia – Towards a Material Intersectional Theory of Asymmetrical Dependencies
Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann
Research Topic: The Documentary Film as Important Medium of the Exploration and Documentation of Relations of Asymmetric Dependency
Dr. James M. Harland
Research Topic: At the Limits of Empire: The Transformation of Identity on the Roman Peripheries, c. 300–800
Dr. Emma Kalb
Research Topic: Slavery and Embodied Difference in Early Modern South Asia
Eva Maria Lehner
Research Topic:Creolizing Identities. Dependency, Body Politics, Resistance
Dr. Viola Müller
Research Topic: Labor conditions of free and enslaved workers in cities of the nineteenth-century Americas
Hanne Østhus
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependency, Gender and Labor in the Household
Malik Ade [PhD completed]
Research Topic: Kitchen Martyrs? Constructions of Household Dependencies in Nigerian Novels
Joseph Biggerstaff
Research Topic: Slavery, Dependency, and Capitalism in Barbados, 1680-1750
Giulia Cappucci
Research Topic: Relations Between Enslaved Women and Female Slaveholders in the Roman Households: an Epigraphic Study
Katja Girr
Research Topic: Asymmetrical dependencies in science production: a case study of illegalized migration researchers’ emotions and vicarious trauma
Zeynep Y. Gökce
Research Topic: Revisiting the Ottoman Households: The Maids and Mistresses
Danitza L. Márquez Ramírez
Research Topic: Contested Tenures: The Making of Land Ownership and Dependency Relations in Colonial Peru (Cajamarca, 16th-18th Centuries)
Lisa Phongsavath
Research Topic: Daughters in Debt: Trading Girls and Girlhood in the Pre-Modern Tai States and Southeastern China
Julia Schmidt
Research Topic: Antonia Forster. Eine intellektuelle Biographie mit Edition
Laurie Venters [PhD completed]
Research Topic: Jeopardy Chanced: The Sexual Agency of Female Slaves in Ancient Rome, with Comparisons to Han China
Thematic Year
Research Area E is setting the thematic focus for the BCDSS’s activities in 2023/24, guiding the focus of intellectual content for:
- Invited fellows taking up residency at the Heinz Heinen Kolleg
- BCDSS Annual Conference Event Series
- Speakers for our regular lecture series, the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lectures (JCMML)
Upcoming Events
For more information on the event program, see here.
10 September 2024
Conference "Romani Feminism Intersectionality in the Context of Dependencies"
12 September 2024
Lecture & Discussion "De-Colonizing Dependency Studies"
12–14 September 2024
Conference "Children, Dependency, and Emotions in the Early Modern World, 1500–1800"
23–25 October 2024
Workshop "Dependency Theory and Intersectionality"
Fellows Seminars
The seminars will take place on Thursdays from 12–14h as a brown bag seminar event.
29 August 2024 - HYBRID
"The terminologies and ideologies of Ancient Greek Slavery and how the two interact" (Joel Pollatschek)
5 September 2024
"The vagrant kids from Rio: anti-vagrancy policies over minors in Rio de Janeiro (1890–1927)" (Mariana Kelly da Costa Rezende)
12 September 2024 - ONLINE
"How to Love a Slave: Social Dependency in Ausonius’ Love Poetry" (Sinja Küppers)
19 September 2024
Tba (Luz Adriana Maya Restrepo)
26 September 2024
"Critics on the margins: Gender, social status, and speaking truth to power in High Medieval Europe (c. 1000–1200)" (Ryan Kemp)
31 October 2024
"21st century cholos in a criollo world? Cultural changes and social exclusion among youth with Andean migrant background in Peruvian elite universities" (Doris León Gabriel)
Research Area E applies an intersectional approach to the theoretical framework of the BCDSS. We look at both the disadvantaging and the privileging effects involved in all these dimensions of social asymmetry, while taking consciously critical standpoints in relation to sexism, classism, racialization, ableism, heteronormativity ..., in order to elaborate on the long and arbitrary legacy of exclusions and on the potential of (so called) marginalized social groups for social change.
This research area not only integrates marginalized perspectives but also demonstrates the necessity of understanding relations of power and asymmetry as constituted and co-constitutive factors in all forms of (strong) social dependency, relying on methodologies including, but not limited to,
- Genealogical Approach
- Social Justice and Anti-Discrimination
- Critical Race Theory
- Structural and Post-Structuralist Intersectionality
- Gender History and Feminism
- Postcolonial Theory